Working Paper: NBER ID: w22165
Authors: Thomas S. Dee; Will Dobbie; Brian A. Jacob; Jonah Rockoff
Abstract: In this paper, we show that the design and decentralized, school-based scoring of New York’s high school exit exams – the Regents Examinations – led to the systematic manipulation of test sores just below important proficiency cutoffs. Our estimates suggest that teachers inflate approximately 40 percent of test scores near the proficiency cutoffs. Teachers are more likely to inflate the scores of high-achieving students on the margin, but low-achieving students benefit more from manipulation in aggregate due to the greater density of these students near the proficiency cutoffs. Exploiting a series of reforms that eliminated score manipulation, we find that inflating a student’s score to fall just above a cutoff increases his or her probability of graduating from high school by 27 percent. These results have important implications for educational attainment of marginal high school graduates. For example, we estimate that the black-white graduation gap is about 5 percent larger in the absence of test score manipulation.
Keywords: Test Score Manipulation; High School Graduation; Educational Outcomes; Equity; Accountability
JEL Codes: I20; I21; I24
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| manipulating a student's score to fall just above a proficiency cutoff (C24) | probability of graduating from high school (I21) |
| test score manipulation (C90) | probability of graduating from high school (I21) |
| test score manipulation (C90) | black-white graduation gap (I24) |
| manipulating a student's score (C90) | probability of meeting the requirements for a more advanced high school diploma (C12) |
| manipulating a student's score (C90) | likelihood of passing physical science exams and advanced math sequences (C12) |